"Suspiciously Well Correlated: A hike down a non-existent "path" marked on OSM."

#PokemonGO: TLDRI found a trail that was marked on OSM that doesn’t actually exist. The area had no spawns before the path spawn update.Walked/climbed/fell over on the lack of trail anyway, it was raining, but I found quite a few Pokémon.Foreword:This post is not a comment on Niantic’s use of Open Street Map (OSM) data or lack thereof, I merely present it as one of many datapoints that may help other travelers and researchers to make determinations in the future. I personally do not believe that Pokemon Go uses live OSM data, but if any travelers wish to make changes to OSM, I would encourage them to read this article first and act in a respectful manner to both other mappers and their work.I would also ask that travelers wishing to emulate and further research my findings be very careful. I have moderate hiking experience, but traversing the wilderness in locations that are literally off the beaten track is still a risky activity for anyone.HypothesisRecent well documented changes made to Pokémon Go’s spawning patterns have increased the amount of Pokémon that appear on trails and paths. Many travelers have suggested, with various levels of confidence, that OSM data may play some role in in the distributions of these new spawns.If OSM did play a role in the creation of these new spawns, a researcher would expect to find spawns along paths that meet the following criteria:The path must be marked on OSM, and must have been marked before Pokémon Go launched (My own field research tends to show that newly marked paths do not generate spawns).The path must be erroneously or incorrectly marked and not readily used– that is to say it is a path that would not be subject to location activity that would generate spawns. Wilderness locations are likely most ideal for this.The path must not have an external 3rd party source – that is to say the user who generated it must not have referenced anything but local knowledge or their own GPS trace to generate the path.The path must not occur in any other accessible form on any accessible map service (excluding those that reference OSM), including variants of Google Maps/Earth, Here and Wikimapia or Government Land and Property Information equivalent documents such as topographical and government maps.The location must have been a devoid of spawns before the ‘path spawn’ update.Field ResearchLuckily, I knew of one location that met all listed criteria. The path hereEdit: Imgur link for when the path vanishes because I removed it: http://ift.tt/2jAHpN3 the path that connects to it do not exist in the real world. I am unsure of why the user who created them chose to mark them in the way they did – even they listed the trail visibility as “horrible” at the time of creation over 3 years ago.I had been down along the creek in the past (using a path that wasn't marked), and from my own experience, no spawns occurred at all, with the area closest to the water being an empty deadzone before the path spawn change.Interestingly, in what was a relatively small amount of distance through relatively difficult terrain, I encountered multiple Pokémon – a Nidoran Male, two Magikarp, two Slowbro, a Ratatta and a Bellsprout. Unfortunately, due to time limitations, difficulty in traversing the terrain, and weather (it was raining) I was not able to press forward very far before my phone ran down to less than 25% and I had to return to safer ground.I chose to hike up another direction rather than returning the way I came. It is worth noting that on this ‘unmapped’ route, I did not encounter any Pokémon.ImagesI created an Imgur album here to show the terrain I traversed and some of the Pokémon I encountered.Discussion and ConclusionsAt this point, I don’t know what this all means. We’ve seen a lot of correlation, not just in these paths, but also in the “biomes” which correlate to OSM tags found in Pokémon Go’s code, in the now removed rustling leaves and in the distribution of nests (I have yet to find a nest that isn’t marked in OSM in some form).But on the other hand, we also have the issue of licensing and the lack of acknowledgement of anything to do with OSM in Pokemon Go.I would suggest, that if Niantic is not using OSM data directly, perhaps they have purchased or sourced data for their own library that has at some point had its source in OSM, although other travelers may be able to suggest alternative causes for cases such as this. via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2k5YPSk